


Paranormal Prerogatives

by labyrinthineRetribution



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Blood, Death, Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 16:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20696501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labyrinthineRetribution/pseuds/labyrinthineRetribution
Summary: In which i spend a lot of time and effort making fun of Dave Strider for no discernable reason other than my own enjoyment. I hope you too dear reader can find amusement here.





	Paranormal Prerogatives

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy you heathens

"Hey Roxy, do you think dead people would like marshmallows or licorice better? I mean, IDK about you, but if I spent my afterlife trapped between an incomprehensible, inescapable purgatory unable to find rest, I'd be craving some good old fashioned red vines like a motherfucker."

Roxy looks over their shoulder as they grab a second box of mini candles-raspberry scented. A solid choice.

"Hrm, better get both to be safe."

You look down at the snack boxes in your grip and consider the proposal. All signs point to a solid 'why the fuck not'. You shrug and chuck the boxes into the basket.

"You see, that kind of high level thinking is exactly the shit that made me invite you. Anybody else would have picked just one, or tried some 'dave, they’re ghosts they can’t eat' which I would have responded with a counterproposal of 'hey fuck you nobody knows what ghosts can do, you're being hell's of insensitive to our noncorporeal companions', but we didn't have to go through that now. Straight and to the fuckin' point."

"Dude, that sentence was anything but to the point."

"Fuck off."

You brush past your sibling and scoot over to the electronics aisle. You were probably going to need back up radios, and more batteries. Like, a solid metric fuckton of those things.

You've been planning this little expedition to the busted up mansion on the outskirts of your bumfuck town for years. Maybe even a decade at this point. Jesus Christ, how the hell are you fucking twenty-five already?

It seemed like just yesterday June had been dragging your ass down their every Friday to stake the place out. Both of you had gone on and on about what could possible be hidden inside, but neither of you had grown the balls to actually step foot on the property yet.

You'd sit atop the hill looking over the decrepit piece of shit and spin wild tales about who had been murdered there. It basically became an extended pissing match between the two of you to see who could actually man the fuck up and go down there, with June winning by slapping the wrought iron fence and immediately booking her ass back up to your perch and pretending that she wasn't one half baked jumpscare away from pissing her shitty Ghostbusters™ boxers.

She had sworn up and down the place had belonged to an old gang who had been mysteriously gunned down in the dead of night by their rivals. She'd even claimed to see bullet holes in the side of the house during her mad dash to one up you, but then again June was the type of person who would convince herself that one of your new classmates was a vampire (false alarm, she was just anemic and dramatic). 

She'd always go on and on about the supposed 'supernatural tendencies' of your hometown. The most supernatural thing about the place was the surprising amount of arson cases that took place each month. Seriously, some bastard's mustang had been set ablaze right across the street from your apartment, and it took the cops about a good half hour to show.

But June had always seen things differently, every dead body dredged up from the creek was apparently the victim of some ghouls wrath, every robbery was the work of a Jersey Devil or fuckin' mothman himself.

Now, you loved June with every part of your being, but you also realized very quickly into your friendship that choosing the town dweeb to be your best bro was not the smartest thing you could have done. But hey, the fucker's the only adult you know who can actually cook and drive, and you'd be damned to give that up.

Another thing you hadn't realized about your friendship with Egbert is that it would eventually force you to either spend the night in a rotting, rat infested, house shaped black plague epicenter, or admit to your oldest and dearest pal that you were too much of a little bitch to actually follow through with it, and that was some bullshit your pride could absolutely not abide by. A fact you were sure to make June aware of on your last call to her.

"So you're actually going to do it? It's not gonna be like when we were seventeen, right?" June had taunted. Jesus, you had practically seen the shit-eating grin on her dumb, doughy face.

"Yes doofus, amazingly I'm not a goddamn pussy when it comes to this shit. When a Strider says he's gonna do something, that motherfucker had better follow through on that. Besides, I got my reputation to think about here."

"What reputation?"

"The reputation that separates me from being grouped in with dickheads like you."

"Oh brother," she'd grumbled into the phone, "You might want to get off your high horse dude. You remember what happened last time right-"

"Of course I fuckin' remember," you had snapped, "I also distinctly remember you turning tail to save your own dick and leaving me to potentially die in the middle of the fuckin' woods."

June had quickly changed the topic after that. It wasn't what you'd classify as a particularly traumatic experience, but you sure don't like to dwell on it for long. This is why this trip was so important. A chance to finally redeem yourself in the eyes of whatever fucked up deity was getting their rocks off on the shit show your life had become.

And as an added bonus, your sibling had even agreed to hunker down with you as moral support, or maybe it was just their own morbid curiosity. You really couldn't give less of a shit, Roxy was just cool to have around.

Speak of the devil…

"Heeeeey, Earth to Davey, is anybody home up there?"

You feel the quick rap of knuckles against your skull and snap out of whatever narrative based trance you had been stuck in.

"Oh fuck, sorry 'bout that."

They shrug and pick at their sleeve.

" 's no biggie, just needed to be sure you hadn't gone all catatonic on me. Store's about to close, you got what we need?"

You glance down at the nearly full basket and do a quick mental check of all the garbage you convinced yourself you'd need but probably wouldn't touch.

"Batteries. Double A, and don't fucking skimp on them, we need a solid ass ton of 'em."

"Say, what's the difference between an ass ton and a regular ton?"

You ponder the question for a moment.

"An ass ton is directly proportional to the volume of my boyfriend's sweet ass." 

Roxy pushes the cart down the rows of merchandise, lazily drifting back and forth in the nearly empty store, eyes darting around for a hopefully conveniently labeled 'batteries are here asshole' section.

"How come the system of ass measurements is tied directly to _ your _ boyfriend's ass? What if I want _ my _ gf on this completely legitimate form of counting?"

"Ro-Lal, I'm gonna level with you here, I love Callie to death, but that girl has no ass to speak of. She is completely and totally devoid of the goods. A karate master could use her rump as a suitable substitute for all the wood they spend all day breaking, which, as everyone knows, is the only reason any bastard would go out of their way to learn karate."

"Bold words coming from the guy who's butt is so lacking in any sort of padding it could technically be considered a concave."

You shoot Roxy a glare. Your ass is fucking phenomenal.

"Excuse me bitch, but I'll have you know that not only is my behind at least a 7/10 on the universal plush-to-firm ass scale, the scale on which all ass shall face judgement when their time comes, that still doesn't change the fact that Calliope is built like a living skeleton."

"Everytime she walks into a room I expect the fucking soundtrack from that shitty stop-motion Hot Topic movie to start playing, complete with uncanny valley stilted movements. Like, I'm not trying to be a dick here, but there's something about her that's so jarring to comprehend, like she's some sort of living marionette, Five Nights at Freddy's, Jim Hensen coke induced fever dream."

"Dude!" 

Roxy tosses a pack of batteries at your head. Huh, kitchenwares. Who the fuck organized this place?

"Ok, yeah, I'm sorry. You can take a cheap shot at Vantas if you want to and we'll call it even."

"The fact that he sank low enough to date your non-existent ass is all the cheapness I need Davey."

"Holy fuck."

The next few hours pass by about as smoothly as they can with you packing up the car and queueing up a last will and testament in case this really is your final stand. At least you can say you went out in style with Roxy's decade old playlist absolutely blaring from the stereo. It's a wonder anything in the car still worked, but most especially the radio and you had a feeling that thing was on its last legs.

Roxy gives it another firm wack as you speed down I-95 with nothing but your wits and the dulcet tones of Bon Jovi to guide your poor souls.

"So what kinda ghost do you think we're gonna get?"

You glance out the window and take in the seemingly endless expanse of dying cornfields. God, the Midwest really needs to update the whole 'Children of the Corn' vibe it constantly has going on. If you see one more abandoned church you would have to take a little field trip out behind the shed with a fucking shotgun.

"Well, that all depends on whether on not this is all a bunch of horseshit."

"Dude, if you thought this was made up you wouldn't have even bothered coming. Hell, you would have entered this place years ago and written some shit on the walls like '0/5 stars. didn’t get clawed to death. pants thoroughly unsoiled. keepin it real since '09'."

“I mean….yeah you've got me in a box here. But like, let's fucking think about this. What are the chances that an army of undead mobsters are just sitting around waiting to fuck with whoever walks through the doors? It's more likely to be your run of the mill coked-up hobo, or if we're really lucky, some Texas Chainsaw motherfuckers, running their own inbred meat factory waaaay down in the sub-basement."

"That's disgusting."

"See? You get what I'm saying. It's up to you to be the scream queen here Roxy. My pipes can't handle that kind of strain, plus I'd probably die in the first five fuckin minutes by like, falling through the floorboards and getting a shard of wood shoved up my ass or impaling my dick on a rusty nail. You are the designated Final 'Girl', I hope you've been keeping up with the calisthenics, because your ass is going through a window or two."

"You think you've covered all the bases in the horror cliche bag yet?"

"Oh fuck no we're just getting started, I haven't even gotten to the part where you'll be hauling ass across the barren, fast food garbage covered farmland of our beloved state while probably soaking wet for no discernable reason. Some asshole with a party city mask and like, a fucking garden hose for a weapon miraculously apperates in front of you and knocks you the fuck out. Stone Cold Steve Austin, motherfucker."

You spend another good half hour freestyling about Roxy's hypothetical misadventures during a stint as the designated survivor in your own little made up horror show, but when the car pulls up the gravel driveway to the front of the gate, you can swear you can hear the distant sounds of chainsaws revving and your own bowels preparing themselves for imminent release.

T-minus ten minutes till the literal and metaphorical shit show. You slump down in your seat and look at the sagging mansion from over the dashboard.

"Would you think less of me if I just up and turned around right now?"

"Absolutely." 

"Good to know."

While Roxy is busying themselves with unpacking the car, you focus on staring down the source of many of your childhood nightmares. Good fucking lord, this place looked even worse up close. The wood is rotten and weeds grow up from the ground and through the walls, choking out any remaining sources of life. The glass is busted in, which would be more unsettling if you and June weren't directly responsible for most of the damage.

One of these days you'd finally ask Rose the correlation between adolescence and hurtling rocks at any and everything. Cain Instinct: This Time Without The Murder. It also turns out June wasn't shitting you with the bullet holes, the place is completely riddled with them. 

"So?"

Roxy's voice snaps you back to reality, oh there goes gravity, the gravity you're referring to of course being the gravity of the situation.

You take a deep breath.

"If I get straight up murdered or whatever, June's banned from my funeral, I leave my dead shit collection to you and my mixtape collection to Karkat."

You take a small step towards the house. Then another. Your stilted strut brings you right up to the gate. Roxy has their phone out and is giving you a big thumbs up. Nice to know your demise will be recorded for posterity reasons.

You reach out for the gate. If this were a movie, it would be cinematic as shit, a slow close up on your hand inching closer and closer, fuck yeah.

In reality, the gate suddenly swings inward _ without you fucking touching it _you might add, and you suddenly realize that no amount of bragging rights over June is worth your insides turned into your outsides. You quickly turn on your heels and start to march right back towards the car.

"Nope, nope, absolutely the fuck not, that is exactly the kind of shit I do not want to see, Casper and Slimer can have a grand old time with their ectoplasm orgy but I cannot abide by-"

"Wait!"

Oh what in the almighty _ fuck _.

A crisp, clear voice rings out into the evening. For a second, you nearly convinced yourself that the fucking house said it. But when you turn back around, you can see a girl on the porch of the house, waving frantically in your direction. Her wild hair is creeping around her face, nearly darker than the night sky. She books it down the steps and sprints towards the gate at full speed.

Part of you just wants to die right then and there so you don't give her the satisfaction of being the reason the life is leaving your body. You take a split second to pride yourself on the fact that you'd probably die on the spot just to spite someone. Another part of you wants to drag Roxy back into the car and get the fuck out of dodge. 

But you stay rooted in place, and as you look closer at the girl, she looks pretty solid and not...lifeless. Not necessarily on the up and up, with the whole suddenly appearing in front of an abandoned house, but even less like she planned on selling your kidneys.

Furthermore, she looks pretty young, but then ago she has one of those ageless faces that made her seem both 21 and 12 at the same time. You were gonna guess a solid 17 for now. The point being, if push came to shove, you could probably take her. Not that you pride yourself on the ability to kick random teenager's asses, but it always seems like a good skill to have.

She comes to a dead stop in front of you and offers her hand, a wide smile plastered across her face. Her mouth was a little too wide, and her eyes a little too big. You shake her hand, because what the hell else are you expected to do here.

Her fingers are slender and long, and fucking ice cold. She smells earthy, like a swamp after it had rained. Her grip is like a goddamn vise. You suddenly reevaluate your assessment of your ass kicking skills and put yourself in the barely respectable 'could escape with a cracked rib or two' category.

You glance behind you. Roxy looks fucking baffled. Whatever fuckery you've gotten yourselves into, there's sure no going back now.

"Uh, I- um. Hey."

"You're David, right?"

You immediately yank your hand back and shove it deep into your pockets in some futile attempt to dispel whatever bullshit psychic vibes this chick's got going on. 

“Depends on where you got that name from.”

Christ. She lets out what could possibly be described as a snort, and what could also be described as a bark-screech. You think she’s laughing, but for all you know you could have just been sneak-cursed.

“Dude, I live here! I saw you and your friend creeping around a couple Halloweens ago. I hope you found clean pants. You guys were always around, I wanted to talk to you, you just never got close enough. She’s new though.”

Mystery Girl jabs a finger over at Roxy. They look between the two of you for a moment and gives a little wave. 

“W- oh, yeah. That’s my sibling Roxy, they- wait, wait, hold the fuck up for a second, you still didn’t answer the question.”

“I could hear your friend Ron screaming your name for like half an hour. You two spent a lot of time out here. You coming to murder me or something? Cause you might be a little disappointed.”

“Well, first of all, my name’s Dave, not David, it’s just Dave. Also, my friend’s name is June, not Ron, although I will take time out of my day to bust her balls about that now. And no, I cannot stress this enough, we aren’t here to kill you. We’re actually here to do like, the exact opposite of that, we didn’t even know anyone lived here.”

“Oh.” She gives you a weird look. “You want me to murder you?”

“Jesus H. Dick, nobodys going to die lady, what’s your deal?”

Roxy swoops up behind you and chimes in some context for the sorry excuse of a conversation you’ve been having.

“Actually, me and my bro here are huntin’ for ghosts. Ya got any skeletons in the closet or bodies in the basement we can poke with a stick?”

Mystery Chick’s face lights right the hell up. It’s like someone flipped a switch, she goes from 20 percent interested to absolute manic energy. She’s practically vibrating.

“Oh my god, you two hunt ghosts?”

“That is a multi-tiered question. Are we hunting ghosts? Technically. Are we ghost hunters? Well we sure as hell don’t have any EMP radios or bullshit ectoplasm ghost canisters form fuckin’ Ghostbusters. I’m mostly here for bragging rights and/or to get a phantasmal BJ from some spirit of the damned. Roxy’s here so somebody could lug my corpse home if I got fucking iced by whatever horseshit voodoo ritual fuckery goes on around here. You got anything like that?”

She’s fucking hit Nirvana. She lets out another hell-squeal and offers her hand again, grinning as hard as she can. You didn’t know faces could stretch that wide, or have that many teeth.

“Dave, Roxy, my name is Aradia Megido. Welcome to my house of horror.”

She nearly rips your arm out of the socket as she drags you up the porch and into the house. You wonder how many people have run through this exact scenario before being axed to death. 

Aradia promises to run through her reason for hunkering down in an abandoned mansion as she ushers you inside and does a grand sweeping motion. The inside wasn't as awful as you had imagined it, no bloodstains or violent chunks of wood ripped out of the floor. It all seemed... untouched. Like it lived its own little bubble of reality.

A thin layer of dust coats every surface, subtle streaks of filth can be seen on the furniture and rugs. The newest thing in here is a computer set up from 1995, which also seemed untouched. You look back from where you came in. The wall is spotless, not a single hole, bullet, glory or otherwise. The windows are still busted though, which is still unsettling in a way you can't quite place yet. 

Aradia motions for you to both take a seat on the sofa, which triggers a cloud of dust and a long, pathetic groan from the furniture. Aradia is still standing however, looking at you both with careful intent. No, wait, she's looking just beyond you. You attempt to turn your head as nonchalantly as possible, an action you've had many years of practice with.

All you notice is a massive grandfather clock, and it's the only thing in the place not covered in plastic, dust or both. It's made of dark, shiny wood with the hands seemingly unmoving, most likely due to its inner workings being ripped out and scattered about the floor. Someone must have really fucking hated clocks.

You wonder how many knives could be stashed over the house right now. You wonder if only June knows you two are here. Aradia awakens from whatever clock induced trance she was in and clears her throat, popping a squat on the floor.

"I assume you're both well versed with the history of this house, yes?"

"Well, Roxy has literally never been here, and everything I know is from my friend who once convinced that one out of every 24 bottles of AJ contains piss in it, so I take everything she says with a goddamn shovel of salt."

"Interesting."

"It really isn't, but go on."

"Well, way back in 1997, my uncle was in a fairly notorious gang. This mansion was the property of their rivals, a group of real nasty guys who wore these hideous green suits."

"Eventually, after years of escalating turf wars and violence, my uncle's boss decided to end it once and for all. The local news cited it as one of the bloodiest drive-bys of the decade, but since there was no concrete evidence and also nobody really wanted to hunt down the people who just mowed through fourteen guys like it was nothing, there were no 'official' subjects and the case went cold."

"My uncle bought the place soon afterwards and they used it for all sorts of wild shit, waterboarding, gambling rings, a third stereotypical mob-esque activity. The point is, a lot of people met their makers here. Anyway, a few months back my uncle passed away and left the place to me."

Well, that was certainly a lot of information to absorb that may or may not be total fucking nonsense. Roxy tentatively raises their hand.

"Question: why would somebody leave their niece a goddamn murder house? That seems like a big no-no on the list of acceptable things to leave in your will. Who the fuck would even wanna stay in a flippin' murder house on purpose, that's like handing out nice little invitations for spooks and shit to start possessing your ass."

"Well that's because I asked for it silly!"

"Ah…"

You chime in again.

"So, if your uncle just passed away why does this place look so shitty and rundown? And how did you see June and me when we were here years ago? Sorry, but I'm not buying whatever piss you're shillin' as AJ man."

"Well it's simple dummy! He stopped using this place years ago. As for when I saw you two, I came out here all the time. It's my place to think, and I really didn't appreciate having that interrupted by you two screaming and throwing rocks through the window all the time."

"Dave, you did that?"

"In my defense, this place already looked condemned."

Aradia stands up and briskly brushes off her skirt.

"Well, I'm choosing to interpret that as an apology. And Roxy, as for why I want to live here, it's the same reason you both came here, or at least Dave. It's the intrigue, the promise of something more beyond these walls. I feel a certain pull to this place, a connection I can't quite place. It's brimming with energy and I felt it from the moment I first stepped foot in here. It feels like I've been here for ages, and I know there are so many more secrets I haven't cracked open yet. Oh, like this one!"

Aradia sprints over to the disassembled clock and slowly shoved it to the side. Behind it is a little door, which she pulls open as she beckons you to come closer. It looks like a tiny elevator shaft, something the size of a flexible adolescent could squeeze into. It's way too dark to see above or below you. 

"It's a dumbwaiter! It leads to an attic upstairs, its where my uncle kept his old records."

"Did he have to get inside this thing every time he wanted his tunes?" Roxy asks.

"Oh no, no, no," Aradia assures them, "He had a key to the attic, God knows where it is now. Such as life."

She abruptly slams the door shut and looks back at you both expectantly. 

"This house is a very special place to me. While some might view it as a bad omen or a house of death, I choose to look beyond that and see what this place is really trying to say. It speaks to me, in its own special way. I've been trying for ages to contact some legit spectors, but no dice. While I can't promise you'll get what you were looking for, I would be more than pleased to have you two spend the night. It gets awfully lonely out here."

You have an odd feeling in your gut, like someone placed an entire unbroken water balloon in there, and now it's just sloshing around.

"Why don't you just, oh I don't know, leave the house if you're so alone?"

Aradia gives you a genuinely puzzled look.

"Why would I leave?"

You don't really know what to say to this. Sure she doesn't seem dangerous, but she does seem a bit off. Then again, this place isn't half as bad as you'd thought it would be, and making Roxy drive home in the dead of night after all of this seems kind of dickish. If this decision leads to you waking up in an ice bath, then so be it.

"Alright, fuck it, call me Booboo cause I'm the fool, we can stay the night, right Ro-Lal?

Roxy squints at Aradia, presumably doing their own mental check up on their abilities to knock out a teenager.

"You got popcorn?"

"Yes!"

"Alright, I'm in."

You and Roxy both strap yourself in for what turns out to be one of the most uneventful nights of your lives. The closest you got to the Twilight Zone was the disgusting amount of black and white horror films your host had on hand. Nice two know people in the fifties had the same level of taste as folks do now, which is to say, absolutely no fucking taste whatsoever.

Despite her taste in cinema, Aradia was fairly easy to get along with. She wasn't what you'd describe as bubbly and stay closer to what you could only describe as cheerfully esoteric. She skirted the edge of 'quirky' and 'unsettling' with such ease that you could only laugh when she mentioned her skull collection. Who the fuck are you to judge, you've got more than your fair share of rodents encased in amber back home. You'd have to come back here again sometime, maybe coordinate something with her to convince June she was some goddamn Victorian ghost.

After this almost pleasant night of ghost stories and burnt popcorn, it leaves you in a fairly relaxed state which is why you feel your reaction to waking up to a rat sniffing your face is completely justified in the eyes of any objective jury.

That reaction being screaming bloody murder. Roxy jolts awake, a look of mild annoyance and major panic across their face.

"Dude what in the fresh _ fuck _ are you doing-"

Roxy chokes on their words. You take a moment to get over your rude awakening and take in your surroundings.

The place is fucking filthy. Everything's covered in some combination of mold, cobwebs or dirt. Mysterious stains are splattered against the wall, dull but clearly visible. Rats and an assortment of bugs scurry out from whatever little heathen hole they had been occupying. Most of the furniture is torn to shreds with dozens of holes. You look behind you. The clock has been smashed to pieces. 

You and Roxy waste no time getting the fuck out of there. If Aradia was still inside, you didn't hear or see her. You never saw from her again, actually.

You dragged June back down there, as Roxy wouldn't step foot within a 5 mile radius of the place. You searched the place top and bottom for any sign of her, of anything, and nothing. Everything was rotten or utterly smashed to bits.

If you had turned around as you made your walk of defeat from the house, you might have noticed movement from the window of the topmost floor. If you had turned down the radio housing your favorite mixtape, you might have sworn you could hear the faintest sound of gunshots, or the wails of a girl meeting her maker.

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun hope y'all had a nice time don't forget to like comment and subscribe  
Also you have no idea how badly I wanted to call this 'In Which It Is Heavily Implied Dave Pissed His Pants At Some Point'


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